Attack the Block
Regal Union Square, August 10, 2011
Movie #58 for 2011
Moses (JOHN BOYEGA, pictured centre) is the leader of a gang of young bullies. He’s on the make and has the wherewithal to be a proper South London drug-running thug. He’s angry, disrespectful, quietly powerful and entirely unsupervised. His trajectory is pretty clear, until aliens land and South London goes bananas.
The premise of Attack the Block is delightfully simple - a gang of young men must defend their housing estate tower (called the block) from an invading horde of vicious, animalistic aliens. What this leaves room for, then, is engaging and complex characters, authentic and often funny dialogue, insightful social commentary, energetically chaotic action set pieces and powerful emotional journeys for the key characters. In addition, the creature design is very cleverly understated, rather than over the top - the creatures are so much less important than the humans in this story.
Like its older cousins Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz (same production team), Attack the Block is wonderfully respectful of the great creature-feature and classic gang films that have come before it. It has a straight face, a warm heart and an encyclopedic knowledge; nary a spoof or sly wink at the camera to be had. It’s deftly done and marks writer/director JOE CORNISH as one to watch.
It’s charming, action-packed and an insightful commentary on consequences, hard choices and what constitutes heroism. I could hardly ask for anything more in a film.
